Summer Reading List For Digital Campaigners

Reading is a powerful tool for improving your outlook, gaining a new perspective, and generating ideas. While it may seem impossible to find the time to read anything other than the news in an Election Year, finding a few minutes each day to read a book is a good way to level up.

Here are some picks for your summer reading list.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert Cialdini

This book is older than I am and it’s a classic for a reason. You’ll learn Cialdini’s six principles for persuading someone to take action, change his or her mind, or adopt a new outlook. You will be a more effective campaigner after reading this book.

“Often we don’t realize that our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.”

This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See

Seth Godin

It’s hard to pick just one Seth Godin book, but this is a good starting place. This Is Marketing emphasizes the power of authenticity and relationship building in marketing. That’s precisely what most campaigns are lacking.

“Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action.”

Think Again: The Power Of Knowing What You Don’t Know

Adam Grant

Campaigners will get two important takeaways from reading this book. First, you’ll learn how important it is to doubt what you think you know. Second, you’ll learn how to encourage others to update their own beliefs.

“In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time.”

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die

Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Campaigning is about promoting ideas, specifically the idea that your candidate is the best choice for voters, and Made To Stick will teach you about the architecture of ideas and what can make them persuasive.

“We know that sentences are better than paragraphs. Two bullet points are better than five. Easy words are better than hard words. It’s a bandwidth issue: The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be.”

Contagious: Why Things Catch On

Jonah Berger

This book investigates what lends an idea to word of mouth transmission. As voter contact rates plummet and political campaigners continue to adopt relational organizing, this knowledge is essential to developing campaign messages that voters will want to make their own.

“We need to design products and ideas that are frequently triggered by the environment and create new triggers by linking our products and ideas to prevalent cues in that environment. Top of mind leads to tip of tongue.”

Conclusion

If you’re short on time but still want to benefit from these ideas, summary platforms like Shortform or Blinkist have most of these titles. Listening to podcast interviews with these authors – a few even have their own shows – can give you a quick overview of the books.

While the tactics, tools, and strategies behind campaigning are always changing, these books offer broader frameworks to shape the messages and approach you can take to campaigning.